Review: AirPro Inflatable Goal

There are many portable soccer goals on the market of varying styles and prices. We’ve been through many of them, and found that the dynamics of bubble soccer has unique requirements that make a good goal hard to find.

Some factors to consider when buying your goals:

• Dimensions (scoring area)
• Portability (collapsed size and weight)
• Cost
• Safety for people
• Safety for bubbles
• Rigidity
• Simplicity of set-up
• Durability

In this post, we’ll look at AirPro goals, one of the alternatives that we’ve tested in the field.

 

Dimensions
The AirPro is available in both 2×3 and 4×6 sizes (the latter is pictured). Either is adequate, but we find for almost all bubble soccer applications, 4×6 is the way to go. 2×3 might be useful for small-footprint, indoor matches, perhaps of 3 vs. 3 players.

Portability
The AirPro wins here. Extremely light and portable, the 4×6 collapses into a small duffle, which comes with the product. The 2×3 fits two goals into on small duffle.

Cost
This is another advantage of the AirPro. The 2×3 are about $60 for a pair, and 4×6 are about $60 each. Check Walmart.com.

Safety
The AirPro is totally pliable and air-filled, so there are no issues with rigid parts puncturing a bubble or a scraping a person, both of which we have had happen with other goal designs.

Rigidity
This is where AirPro fails. Outdoors, in a windy situation, these goals just don’t hold up. Even with stakes or sand bags, they tend to fall over under any substantial cross-wind, frustrating players and refs (and operators!). It is difficult to inflate them “tight” enough to give them good rigidity.

Simplicity of set-up
AirPro’s design is not well thought-out with regard to set up. The 2×3 are fine, but the 4×6 have two different inflation valves (beach-ball mouth-style). They can be inflated with a pump using proper adapter, but it can be tough to close the valve without losing air and rigidity. Also, these two valves are oriented in odd places on the goals, so squeezing out all the air to get full collapse for packing can be tedious and time-consuming. It gets better with practice, but remains a bit tedious.

Durability
AirPro seems to be fairly cheap construction. We haven’t had any fail in our field tests, but we do question the long-term durability under commercial use.

 

Conclusion

AirPro is a worthwhile goal if you are running exclusively indoor games. The inexpensive cost and light weight make it attractive, making up for the less-than-ideal inflation design. However, for outdoor operations, these goals will flop in a cross-wind and cause unwanted hassle. For a commercial bubble soccer operation, we prefer the Goalrilla, which is reviewed here.